On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 12:24 AM, Keegan Peterzell keegan.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Different wikis have different policies on paid editing, most have no policy. There is no global policy. Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
That's not exactly true. All Wikimedia projects are beholden to the Terms of Use (https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use) which was recently amended to add:
*Paid contributions without disclosure*
These Terms of Use prohibit engaging in deceptive activities, including misrepresentation of affiliation, impersonation, and fraud. As part of these obligations, you must disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation. You must make that disclosure in at least one of the following ways:
- a statement on your user page,
- a statement on the talk page accompanying any paid contributions, or
- a statement in the edit summary accompanying any paid contributions.
Applicable law, or community and Foundation policies and guidelines, such as those addressing conflicts of interest, may further limit paid contributions or require more detailed disclosure. A Wikimedia Project community may adopt an alternative paid contribution disclosure policy. If a Project adopts an alternative disclosure policy, you may comply with that policy instead of the requirements in this section when contributing to that Project. An alternative paid contribution policy will only supersede these requirements if it is approved by the relevant Project community and listed in the alternative disclosure policy page. For more information, please read our FAQ on disclosure of paid contributions.
Many wikis do not have policies that supersede this requirement, and so are subject to it. That said, the ToU does not specify precisely what happens when someone is found to be in violation of this rule, which I know we struggle with on the English Wikipedia.
– Molly (GorillaWarfare)